This year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. This week we see the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, a sovereign nation, to capture that nation’s leader—however malevolent he may be—contrary to principles of international and American justice.
The only principle of that invasion and capture: Might makes right.
A primary principle of the American Revolution and of the next 250 years of America: Might does not make right.
As much talk as we hear and action we witness, including extending similar invasions to other nations, keep this motto in mind: Might does not make right.
The flag above, designed in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden, a delegate to the Continental Congress, is a symbol of that principle. The Gadsden flag was an inspiration then and remains essential. To put it in contemporary terms: No Kings.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, among his other profitable and world-changing achievements.
In his will, he bequeathed part of his fortune to the establishment of five Prizes, including the Peace Prize. According to his will, it is to be awarded to the person who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
We know two things about the current state of Peace Prizes. One is that the current president of the U.S. really wants the Nobel Peace Prize. Two is that his supplicants are now creating new Peace Prizes for him to win.
In this spirit of new Peace Prizes, proposed is the Putin Peace Prize. Apparently, you can now win (admittedly fake) Peace Prizes, such as the FIFA football Peace Prize, even if you are a leading war maker who does not “work for fraternity between nations”. So we might consider going all the way, actually naming the prize itself in honor of a distinctly unpeaceful leader.
Who should be awarded the first Putin Peace Prize?
On New Year’s Day, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as Mayor of New York.
Much has been said about his election as leader of America’s biggest and most important city and one of the most significant cities in the world.
You have heard that he is young, that he is charismatic, that he is a Democratic Socialist, that he is a Muslim who was sworn in on a Quran, that his election was unexpected. You have heard that he has been attacked as a Communist, a terrorist, an antisemite. You have heard that New York billionaires are considering leaving the one-of-a-kind city they love and that enabled them to become billionaires. (No, he is not a Communist, terrorist or antisemite. No, those billionaires will not be leaving New York because, well, it’s New York.)
Whatever you’ve heard, hear for yourself. Following is the inspired and inspiring speech Mamdani gave at his inauguration. Leading New York City is more challenging than leading many states, especially in 2025. Whatever your politics and public philosophy, you will hear a genuinely optimistic call to expect more and work together to achieve it. For every mention of New York and New Yorkers, substitute America and Americans.
I am a native New Yorker, spending most of my life away from the city, in a sort of geographical diaspora. Meaning: I am always a New Yorker. I could not be prouder to say that than when watching the future of New York with Mamdani.
I am ashamed to learn that I have never posted about the movie Team America: World Police (2004), from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. I apologize.
If you like or love South Park, if you don’t like or love South Park, if you never see an episode or another episode of South Park, find this movie and watch it. Timely in 2004 and at many moments since, it is even more timely today.
Absurdly funny, indiscriminately cruel, and mercilessly true. Nothing is to everyone’s tastes. But if you see reviews or comments questioning the qualities of this movie, ignore them until you’ve seen it for yourself. Because under the current circumstances, or under the circumstances of 2004, or before that or after now, this is the ultimate puppet analysis of modern American geopolitics.
Once you see it, you’ll never forget it. As we occupy Venezuela, or Iran, or…Greenland?
It is not currently streaming for free. Pay for it if you have to. Meanwhile, following are a trailer and some clips to entertain and inform you.
The ideograph of wei above is meticulous—it looks simple, yet its meaning is profound. The stem of the ideograph is a tree, mu. A second curved stroke was added through the tree and thus the ideograph of wei was created. Without the horizontal stroke we have a picture of a tree with its roots growing downward and its branches growing upward. The horizontal stroke represents the ground. The portion of the tree underneath the ground is still alive. It has already grown to its full height (fulfilled its growth), and now it starts a new cycle of growth. The structure of the ideograph supplies a vivid picture of having achieved one’s goal, but not yet having been fulfilled. There is a new cycle to come. The meaning of the ideograph of ji signifies crossing a river, from here to there, or from beginning to end.
SIGNIFICANCE
This gua ends the sixty-four gua and the three hundred and eighty-six yao of the I Ching. But the principle of change continues without end. Events in the universe move forward and alternate in cycles. The stage of Not Yet Fulfilled will gradually reach the stage of Already Fulfilled. The stage of Already Fulfilled is merely the fulfillment of certain events or of a certain stage in a cycle of events. If some occurrences have reached the stage of Already Fulfilled, there are always others that are Not Yet Fulfilled. The stage of Already Fulfilled is also the stage of Not Yet Fulfilled. The stage of Not Yet Fulfilled is the beginning, like the dark before the dawn. The I Ching starts with Qian, the Initiating, and ends with Wei Ji, Not Yet Fulfilled. When the development of events reaches the end of a cycle, Already Fulfilled, then another cycle, Not Yet Fulfilled, begins. In this way, the cycles of change and development repeat endlessly.
A transition from disorder to order is representative of the I Ching as a whole. In the beginning it swings from extreme to extreme, with no balance in between. By the time it reaches the final gua, Already Fulfilled and Not Yet Fulfilled, a perfect state of balance has been achieved.
During King Wen’s sitting in stillness he reflected on the past in light of the present. The destiny of the Shang dynasty had been fulfilled. The destiny of the Zhou was not yet fulfilled. Its situation was like that of the little fox who had almost crossed a river. There was success in store, and nothing was unfavorable.
Too much of nothing Can make a man feel ill at ease One man’s temper rises While another man’s temper might freeze Now it’s a day of confession And we cannot mock a soul Oh, when there’s too much of nothing No one has control Bob Dylan, Too Much of Nothing
Count the items in your day. What you encounter and engage with. Inside and outside. Things and thoughts. Incidentally or by choice. It’s a lot.
As you count, you might consider the character and value of those items. What is each one adding? What is each one subtracting? More to the point, what is each one adding to or subtracting from what you value?
AI is literally trained on items, ready to process and offer those items. And it is an item itself. So if the volume of items already exploded with the digital access of internet and devices, that is now exponentially larger.
It is certain that 2026 will be another “year of AI”, as will every year in the foreseeable future. More items for us to encounter and engage in, incidentally and by choice, added to the proliferation of items we are already experiencing.
It is also certain that we, as lovely as we are, are not yet equipped to handles all these items in ways that are good for us as individuals and as societies. If we work at it maybe someday, but not yet, though hopefully before it overtakes us and we drown.
Which is why counting and valuing items may be helpful. It is, if you like to think of it this way, just awareness and consciousness of the items, their value, and your values. Once you are aware, you choose.
One person’s drowning is another person’s swimming in a vast ocean. If you understand the ocean and you know how to swim.
Today, the day after Christmas, is the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. As he was being stoned to death, he prayed for his attackers.
There is a video of the Christmas Eve dinner at Mar-A-Lago. Trump is sitting at a cordoned-off table, with his wife Melania and an unidentified man. Melania is talking to the man, Trump is alone, mostly ignored. It was sad.
In Buddhist traditions, we are asked to treat enemies as treasures and spiritual friends:
When I see ill-natured people, Overwhelmed by wrong deeds and pain, May I cherish them as something rare, As though I had found a treasure-trove…
Even if someone whom I have helped And in whom I have placed my hopes Does great wrong by harming me, May I see them as an excellent spiritual friend.
If you are one of the many affected directly or indirectly by what appears to be a one-man mission to carelessly hurt others and make things worse, it is beyond challenging to “love your enemy”—no matter that we have that advice on good authority.
A couple of things:
Empathy makes you stronger, not weaker.
Empathy does not mean giving up on trying to work against the worst and for the best, including opposition to those “ill-natured people, overwhelmed by wrong deeds and pain.”
In the 1950s, Woolworth’s was one of America’s retail giants, with hundreds of stores everywhere in the nation. It was known as the “five-and-ten-cent store”, though by that time, while it was still a value variety store, most items weren’t a nickel or dime.
At Christmas, Woolworth’s published a comic book, Woolworth’s Happy Time Christmas Book. It contained a few holiday comics, but mostly it was page after page of product promotions aimed at kids—and at parents who did the shopping.
Below are just a few of the pages, a taste of the experience of Christmas, shopping, childhood and parenthood in America circa 1952.
I’ve posted before about the infancy gospels, Christian texts that fill in missing information about the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. These gospels are apocryphal—they are not included in the biblical canon—but have been influential and interesting for centuries.
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew includes a fascinating story about dragons and wild beasts worshiping Jesus:
18 Baby Jesus Is Worshiped by Dragons and Other Wild Beasts
1 When they arrived at a certain cave where they wanted to cool themselves off, Mary came off the donkey and sat down, and held Jesus on her lap. There were three male servants with them on the road, and one female servant with Mary. And behold, suddenly many dragons came out of the cave. When the servants saw them they cried out. Then the Lord, even though he was not yet two years old, roused himself, got to his feet, and stood in front of them. And the dragons worshiped him. When they finished worshiping him, they went away. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet in the Psalms, who said, “Praise the Lord from the earth, O dragons and all the places of the abyss.”
2 The Lord Jesus Christ, though just a small child, walked along with them so that he might not be a burden to anyone. Mary and Joseph were saying to one another, “It would be better for those dragons to kill us than to harm the child.” Jesus said to them, “Do not think of me as a young child, for I have always been the perfect man, and am now; and it is necessary for me to tame every kind of wild beast.”
Of all the early Christian apocrypha, none played a larger a role in the theology, culture, and popular imagination of late antiquity and the Middle Ages than the Proto-Gospel of James. This is the Gospel “prior to” the Gospel, an account of the events leading up to and immediately following the birth of Jesus. Bart Ehrman, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament
In this story, time stands still for Joseph:
18 Joseph Watches Time Stand Still
1 He found a cave there and took her into it. Then he gave his sons to her and went out to find a Hebrew midwife in the region of Bethlehem.
2 But I, Joseph, was walking, and I was not walking. I looked up to the vault of the sky, and I saw it standing still, and into the air, and I saw that it was greatly disturbed, and the birds of the sky were at rest. I looked down to the earth and saw a bowl laid out for some workers who were reclining to eat. Their hands were in the bowl, but those who were chewing were not chewing; and those who were taking something from the bowl were not lifting it up; and those who were bringing their hands to their mouths were not bringing them to their mouths. Everyone was looking up. I saw a flock of sheep being herded, but they were standing still. The shepherd raised his hand to strike them, but his hand remained in the air. I looked down at the torrential stream, and I saw some goats whose mouths were over the water, but they were not drinking. Then suddenly everything returned to its normal course.
Bart Ehrman, a leading expert on these gospels, writes that every time he reads this passage, he thinks of the Twilight Zone.
Consider this history, consider this a story. It concerns a profound matter, for believers and non-believers, for philosophers and scientists.
In contracts, the term “time is of the essence” is commonly included. Meaning that it is a primary element of performance.
In the Bible, the story begins with time. The usual first word in translation is “when”, followed by a counting of days.
Time is of the essence. In our lives, we keep time, mark time, use time wisely, foolishly, carefully, carelessly. One thing we know, or think we know, whatever time is, it does not stop. Or can it?
Bob Schwartz 